The Chicken Plucker

by Darrel Bird

gears, and he slammed the long gear shift down between her legs which left little doubt to Sage about the possibility that there had been incest in this family, “Pardon me honey.” Dylan was staring out the window at the farm land as the truck roared on at the unheard of speed of twenty five miles an hour.

  “What is that smell?” Sage addressed no one in particular as a terrible smell radiated up from the floor.

  “Dead fish.” Papa returned, “He flopped under there and I forgot to throw him out.”

  “What are yall having for supper tonight Papa? We might come over for supper.” Dylan asked.

  “We having us a mess of frog legs, you’d be welcome to have some.” Papa Dubois hawked a loogy out the window of the truck.

  “Frog’s legs?” Sage asked.

  “Yeah, thems good honey.” Dylan returned.

  “Thems? Did you say thems?”

  “Uhuh, ats what I said.”

  “Do you all talk that way?”

  “What way?”

  “Never mind.”

  Thirty minutes later the truck pulled off the paved highway, and began its way down a dirt road that left her first bouncing off Papa Dubois, and then off her new husband.

  “Ha…ha…ha…how far is it?” She asked, her voice jiggling.

  She had just gotten the question out when the truck pulled into a yard, and died another terrible death. A pall of dust caught up with them, and swooped over them. She looked, and saw a faded brown trailer house almost covered over with vines. The trees around the yard was also covered over, the vines growing clear to the tops of the trees.

  “What is this place?” She asked as Dylan exited the truck.

  “This is our house honey, do you like it?”

  “Ou…ou…ou…our house?”

  “Say what’s gotten into you, you got the stutters or something?”

  But she didn’t hear him as she had already fainted. She awoke to Papa Dubois saying, “She’ll be all right son, she just swooned when she saw how beautiful the place is.”

  “Here sweetheart, let me help you into the house.”

  They helped her into the trailer, and deposited her on a couch that had seen its better days in nineteen seventy nine.

  Dylan got an electric fan, and positioned it on her, “What happened?”

  “You swooned.”

  “Swooned? I don’t swoon.”

  “Well, you did that time.”

  It was then she remembered the horrible looking thing that was to be their home, “Am I inside ou…ou…our house?”

  “Yep, pretty nice ain’t she?”

  “I don’t have words!”

  “Told you that’s why she swooned.” Papa Dubois said decisively. “Yall come on over when you get ready to eat, mama will be getting supper on the table.”

  “Thanks for picking us up Papa.”

  “Glad to do it, Bob took your sixty five Mustang over to his place to get it running for you.”

  Papa Dubois slammed the broken screen door and disappeared around the corner of the house.

  “Its so stuffy in here.” Sage said.

  Dylan looked at her and his face brightened, “We have a air conditioner in the bedroom winder.”

  “What did you say?”

  “A air conditioner.” Dylan said.

  “No…after that, oh never mind. I need something to drink.”

  He walked over to the ancient refer, and brought her a can of soda. “I get it on sale at the Piggly Wiggly, so we got plenty.”

  “Piggly Wiggly?”

  “The grocery store down near the chicken plant.”

  “Of course.”

  “If you are feeling better, we better get on over to Papa’s, before the frog legs get et up.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait!”

  “I told Mama you would like frog legs. I’ll tell her you couldn’t wait to get atum’.”

  He led her around the house and through the Kudzu until she spied Papa Dubois house. The hounds ventured out from under the long front porch to greet them by jumping up on her with their forelegs. One succeeded in licking her in the face.

  Dylans mother was a really small soft spoken woman, and from looking at her, Sage doubted that a person could hear her from twenty feet away, much less two hundred feet as Dylan had claimed. She met them at the door, and after hugging Dylan, she hugged Sage.

  “Yall come on in, we got supper on the table, I told Papa we had to wait on you.”

  The Dubois’s had a long table, which only half of it was loaded with food, including a platter of skinny looking pieces of meat.

  “Here you sit right down by me dear; I want to hear all about you.” Mama Dubois led her to a chair beside her at the table.

  Sage noticed right away the Dubois’s were extremely polite. Mamma took her plate and loaded it to the side boards, and she wondered how she could ever eat it. The little meat things were good, as was the rest of the food.

  “Oh, these are yummy! What are they?”

  “Them’s frog legs honey.” Dylan grinned at her.

  “Frogs legs?” She answered in a tiny voice.

  “Ain’t they good? Papa caught them fresh this morning.”

  Sage of a sudden felt like she might throw up. She covered her mouth with her hand, and gave a little belch instead, and exclaimed, “Oh, I’ve just eaten too much, I’m so full I can’t eat another bite.”

  “They must not eat very much in New York honey.” Mama Dubois said.

  “I’m just feeling a little under the weather.”

  “Oh you poor dear. Dylan, you take her home, and let that girl get some rest.”

  “Yes Mama.”

  When they exited the house, it was getting very late, the air was balmy, and somewhere a Whippoorwill was giving its sleepy call. The crickets were beginning a noisy throng of voices that added to the evenings in Louisiana.

  When they got back to the house through the Kudzu, she sat on the couch while Dylan fixed them an ice cold drink of the Piggly Wiggly, on special, soda. She found her cell phone in her bag, and dialed her mother.

  “Where are you dear, you’re breaking up?” He mother asked.

  “I’m in Louisiana mother.”

  “Where?”

  “Louisiana.”

  “What in the world are you doing in Louisiana?”

  “That is where Dylan lives mother.”

  “Who?”

  “Dylan, my husband, if you had bothered to come to our wedding, you would have known who.”

  “You get on a plane, and bring yourself right back to New York missy, right this minute!”

  “I can’t do that mother, I’m married now.”

  “What does this husband of yours do?”

  “He’s a chicken plucker mother.

  “A CHICKEN PLUCKER!”

  Sage thought she heard sounds of choking on the other end, “Are you ok mother?”

  Her cell phone sputtered, and the screen went blank, the battery was dead. She rummaged around to find the charger, but couldn’t find it because it had fallen out of her bag, and landed between the cushions of the old couch.

  “Lets go to bed Dylan, I’m so tired.”

  “Me too, I’ll crank up the air conditioner.”

  In the bedroom was an old air conditioner that hung crookedly in the window. Dylan climbed over the bed to twist the knob. The room was so small there was no walk around space, and the bed sat crushed against the wall. The fan began turning slowly, and then began picking up speed, making a noise that sounded similar to a jet air craft spooling up on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It leaked a considerable amount of air toward the ceiling, as it groaned about every twentieth revolution. Soon the room was cool enough to sleep in.

  At eleven Dylan woke her, “I have to go to work honey.”

  “Work!” She looked at the big Ben that sat on a shelf over the bed. “At this ungodly hour?”

  “Yes, I have a late shift on the plucker.”

  “You mean they pl
uck chickens at night?”

  “Yeah, and my vacation is over, I might have to work a double shift, Sadie is looking to have her baby any time.”

  “Who is Sadie?”

  “She’s my assistant on the plucker.”

  “Oh. You have an assistant chicken plucker?”

  “Yep, took me a while to have an assistant, that’s how I got a vacation.” She could barely hear him over the air conditioner and the groan of the pipes as he showered. In fifteen minutes he slammed the door, and she was alone with the air conditioner. She couldn’t go back to sleep, and she got up and sat on the couch. With the bedroom door closed she could barely hear the air conditioner, and the night sounds outside began to leak into the room. The night air had cooled the house, and she was sitting about half asleep, her head drooping when she jerked awake suddenly at a sound that went clear through her.

  It was a screeching caterwauling sound that rose, and then fell away to an awful grave yard low. She sat petrified as the sound came again, and again. She sat very still, her eyes glued to the door until the sound ceased, and light began to stream into the windows.

  At eight AM she heard the old truck stop in the yard, and Dylan walked through the door. She ran to him, and clung to him, as she told him about the awful sound.

  “Might have been a Rougarou. If he shows up again, we’ll hunt him.”

  “What is a